


Walking on High Hopes

by feverbeats



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 16:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18876667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: Vanya has never given her anything, but she calls Claire once a week, and has since Mom and Dad got divorced.





	Walking on High Hopes

"I heard your mom was a supervillain."

Claire's first day as a freshman at her new school is going just great. Who just comes up and says that to somebody?

"Not really," she says.

"Yeah," says a second girl, "I saw you on US Weekly. Your mom's the Rumor."

"Okay," Claire says. She walks faster.

Nobody sits with her at lunch, so maybe word has already gotten around. Maybe she's going to be the freak with a supervillain mom at this school, too. She almost misses when she was just the freak with a famous actress mom.

When Claire gets home that day, Dad's already there. He gives her a big smile and says, "Hey, how was school?"

"Good," Claire says. She climbs up onto the stool that's just a little too tall. They've only been in this apartment a month, and she doesn't like it as much as the old one. The old one was bigger, and it reminded her of Mom. Every year Dad said he was going to sell it, and Claire had been successful at tantruming until he agreed not to. Until this summer.

A lot of things have happened this summer. A few years ago, Dad had a really awkward conversation with her about puberty (okay, it was mostly her nanny who had it), but the real changes didn't start until a couple of months ago. Claire doesn't think these charges are ones she can share with Dad, and she's too old for a nanny now.

After dinner, she runs right up to her room and locks the door. Dad gets that she needs privacy, even if he won't let her have a separate own phone line.

Claire builds a wall of pillows around herself, including a body pillow as long as she is. She turns off all her lights, except the little white twinkle lights that run around her mirror. Mom got those for her, back when she was a kid.

She misses being a kid, and having two parents. She misses how Mom would do her hair. Dad takes her to get it done at a salon, and that's not the same at all.

Her uncles and Klaus write to her sometimes. She made sure they all had her new address, so that her Uncle Diego can still send her weird little independent comics and earrings. He's the reason she got her ears pierced. She gets mail from Uncle Luther, now, too, which is totally different. He spends her postcards, sometimes from places on Earth and sometimes not. They're always written awkwardly, almost formally, but they're very sweet.

She's only met Klaus once or twice, and she gets packages maybe three times a year. They're always lopsided boxes full of an assortment of candy, knickknacks, and what might be trash. There's always at least one wonderful thing in there.

And then there's her Aunt Vanya. Vanya has never given her anything, but she calls Claire once a week, and has since Mom and Dad got divorced. Dad has finally gotten used to the idea. Claire thinks he doesn't trust anyone from Mom's side of the family. But he knows that Mom and Vanya don't get along, so that probably helps.

Dad tolerating phone calls with an awkward aunt and weird care packages from uncles or whatever doesn't mean he would understand what's going on with Claire. She sometimes feels like Dad wants her to be all him and no Mom, when the truth is the opposite. She's already decided that she can't ever tell him what she can do.

She crawls out of her pillow fortress and puts on a record. Almost all of her records are things she has left over from when she lived with Mom. Mom loved music, although probably less now. Music probably makes Mom think of Aunt Vanya.

There's this Toploader record that Claire keeps listening to, and she knows exactly where to put the needle to play her favorite song. It's called "Just Hold On" and it makes her whole chest ache when she hears it.

She pulls out her diary and writes the lyrics as she listens. _You're making the most of what you can and what you can't have / Hoping for someone to show you to another path._ She's going to tear the page out and tape it to her wall.

Just as the song ends, the phone rings.

"GOT IT!" Claire yells, hoping Dad can hear her. She flings herself out of her fort again, scattering pillows, and grabs the phone. "Hello?"

"Hey, Claire." It's Aunt Vanya's warm, scratchy voice.

"Hey," Claire says. She climbs up on her desk and perches there, wrapping the phone cord around her arm.

"How's it going?" Vanya asks. She never asks about school, which is nice.

"Okay," Claire says. "Kids keep talking about Mom."

There's a short silence, and Claire wishes she hadn't mentioned Mom, but then Vanya says, "I'm sorry. People are jerks." Her voice sounds strained.

"Yeah," Claire says. "Anyway, I'm trying to figure out how to practice better here. It's hard. There aren't as many private places." Most days Dad will be home after she is, which will be her real chance. She has to be careful, though. It's amazing that she's never lit anything on fire.

It's not just fire, though. It's light and heat. She can harness them and bring them out, wherever they're found. She can take the glow from her nightlight and make it expand and diffuse until her whole room is glowing softly. She can take the flames from their news gas stove and make them dance high and low.

"I was thinking about that," Vanya says. Her voice still doesn't sound right.

"Are you okay?" Claire asks.

"Don't turn on the news," Vanya says, somewhere between serious and amused. "I'm okay, but I did get hurt today."

"Fighting crime?"

Vanya clears her throat. "Anyway, I was thinking we could meet up. Go out."

"Really?" Claire says, forgetting everything else. She knows Vanya is in LA a lot, but she never comes by.

"Yeah," Vanya says. "Talk to your dad about this Saturday, okay? I gotta go. Love you, night." She hangs up before Claire can answer.

Claire's so excited that it takes her a minute to remember to worry. She has a TV in her room now, too, which is probably Dad's guilt at work, but she'll take it. It takes her twenty minutes to find a channel that's still playing news. They're talking about the fight where Aunt Vanya got hurt. They're talking about the White Violin vs. the Rumor.

Claire turns the TV off.

The next morning at breakfast, she's so anxious she can't eat. How is she going to ask Dad about Aunt Vanya in a way where he'll say yes?

When they're almost out of time and she still hasn't touched her cereal, she says, "Hey Dad? I have a question."

He gives her a deer-in-the-headlights look, and she realizes he probably thinks she wants to talk about what was on the news.

"Aunt Vanya asked if I wanted to hang out this weekend," she says.

"Oh," Dad says, smiling. "Well...Yeah. That's probably fine. Around here?"

Claire nods vigorously, willing to agree to anything.

"Then that's fine," Dad says. "Just as long as I know when she'll have you back. I can talk to her about that." He doesn't look thrilled at that prospect.

Claire has time to eat a few bites of her breakfast before she goes. She thinks everything's fine, but when she slides off her stool and grabs her bag, Dad says, "Hey."

"Yeah?" Claire says.

"You know she can't get you involved in that stuff, right?"

"What?" Claire says, flooded with adrenaline.

Dad sighs and drums his fingers on the marble countertop of the kitchen island. "You know. The crime-fighting stuff. I know you might feel like...that it's a way to feel close with your Mom. But if Vanya tries to talk to you about any of that, you tell me. And that will be the end of you spending time with her. This is strictly for you to see family. Okay?"

"I know," Claire says reflexively.

"Yeah," Dad says. He looks relieved, and Claire almost feels guilty, but she's so busy trying to fix her face that she doesn't feel _that_ guilty.

Saturday can't come soon enough. Claire packs her favorite purse (huge and, fake leather) with snacks and lunch and lotion and tons of other things she probably won't need. The food, maybe. Vanya doesn't always remember about eating.

Vanya picks her up on foot. Claire's used to how she looks now, from always seeing her on the news, but today she gasps. Vanya isn't just ghost-pale with bright eyes, she's got a freshly-healing cut running down the right side of her face.

"Oh," she says. "Claire, no, I'm okay."

"Okay," Claire says, but it's not.

They go to a Starbucks and get drinks (coffee for Vanya, caramel frappuccino for Claire), but they don't stay. The place Vanya takes Claire is a series of empty rooms above a bank of stores with faded awnings. There isn't any furniture except a sagging couch.

"Do you live here?" Claire blurts out.

Vanya smiles. "No," she says. "I don't live in the city. I don't really live anywhere right now. I have...bases, I guess. Places I work out of. This is the newest one, and it's just for us."

"For us to practice?" Claire asks. It seems too good to be real.

"Yeah," Vanya says. "If you want." She shows Claire around. It's not true that the place is totally empty. There's a big generator and a room full of lamps and candles. It's beautiful. It's a gross old building, but that room looks like the inside of Claire's head.

"You know," Vanya says, when they're on the couch finishing their drinks, "Your mom asked about you. Monday evening."

The day Vanya got hurt.

"Oh," Claire says. She doesn't know how she's supposed to feel about that. The reason Mom doesn't see her isn't because she doesn't want to. It's because the court said she couldn't, because of some things that happened that nobody will really explain to Claire. It was to do with her powers, and with Claire, and with Vanya. Maybe Vanya will explain it one of these days.

Maybe the plan is for Claire to get good at what she does and then fight Mom. She pushes that thought away and tries to appreciate that Vanya has done all this for her.

That night, at home in bed, she can't sleep. She keeps thinking about the news, and the White Violin vs. the Rumor. Hanging around with Aunt Vanya is okay, but is learning to use her powers with the White Violin okay? Is that taking a step toward doing something that would hurt Mom?

She squeezes her eyes shut and feels all the white lights that Mom bought her starting to glow brighter and brighter until she can feel the warmth on her skin. She doesn't know who she is yet, and there are all these options in front of her. It's like the song. She's adrift, and she doesn't know what's coming next, but she's going to hold on.


End file.
